Kraszewski Museum

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Kraszewski Museum
Józef Ignacy Kraszewski

The Kraszewski Museum is a literary museum in Dresden in the municipal association of the museums of the city of Dresden , which is dedicated to the Polish writer, painter, historian and composer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812–1887). It was established in 1960 in the building he lived in during part of his 20-year exile in Dresden.

The specialty of the Kraszewski Museum is its binationality. It has now become a lively place for German-Polish encounters. The exhibitions are designed in both languages; The museum also has a library with books in Polish . The museum maintains close contacts with the “ German-Polish Society of Saxony” and the “Union of Poles in Saxony and Thuringia”.

Due to a Polish law, the museum had to return most of the exhibits about Kraszewski to Germany's eastern neighbor at the end of 2011. The original plan was to finally close the museum in July 2012. On January 18, 2013, however, a new permanent exhibition was opened.

Location

The museum is located in a Dresden villa built around 1855 in the Swiss country house style on the outskirts of the Radeberger Vorstadt district , part of the Neustadt a little northeast of the center of the Saxon capital. Nordstrasse runs south of the museum and Jägerstrasse runs north of it. In the west, the museum property is bounded directly by the Prießnitz , which crosses from the Dresdner Heide into the Neustadt not far to the north . The Prießnitzstraße on the other bank of the river is already part of the Outer Neustadt .

Other Dresden museums in the area are the Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr and the Bautzner Strasse Memorial .

Permanent exhibition

Since the beginning of 2013, a new permanent exhibition on Józef Ignacy Kraszewski's life and work, organized by the Adam Mickiewicz Museum in Warsaw, has been on view in three rooms of the Kraszewski Museum, including the former study of Józef Ignacy Kraszewski. It includes around 60 exhibits. The rooms are kept in the Polish national colors of red and white, information boards provide information in German, Polish and English. The city and state had previously invested 37,500 euros each in the future of the museum, while Poland contributed 200,000 złoty (around 50,000 euros). For 2013 and 2014, the Dresden double budget each provided a further 30,000 euros for the museum.

Special exhibitions and events

In addition to the previous permanent exhibition on Kraszewski, the museum also included temporary exhibitions dealing with other important Polish personalities and events as well as Polish life in the present. After the permanent exhibition was discontinued at the end of 2011, the special exhibitions will take center stage - only a small room is dedicated to the work of the museum's namesake in Dresden. A first temporary exhibition, which opened in February 2012, deals with the influence of families of German origin on the cultural life of Warsaw in the 19th and 20th centuries under the title “Poles of free choice” .

The museum's program also includes regular literary readings, lectures on various topics, book presentations and panel discussions as well as chamber music evenings. If the weather permits, these small concerts can also take place in the garden. Guided tours are also offered. There is also a guest apartment in the building.

Library

The Kraszewski Museum has a small museum library with a reading café. It comprises over 500 volumes in Polish. More than 300 of them can be assigned to the original-language Polish literature of the 20th century and were added to the inventory during the GDR era , including works by Mickiewicz, Chopin , Norwid , Prus , Sienkiewicz and Słowacki that only appeared after 1900 . A total of 120 of the titles in the library were printed in the 19th century. 170 works are by Kraszewski alone. A few other writings, mainly from Polish emigrants living in Dresden, were produced by a printing company operated by Kraszewski himself in Dresden around 1870. The book inventory has not been expanded since 1978.

history

Kraszewski Museum 1958
Kraszewski memorial plaque on the museum building

As a result of the January uprising in 1863, Kraszewski had to leave the Russian Empire for political reasons. He went into exile and arrived on February 3, 1863 in the royal seat of Dresden in the Kingdom of Saxony , where he settled for more than two decades. Between March 1873 and March 1879 he lived in the villa that is now the museum. There he met numerous contemporaries who had also emigrated from Poland and developed a lively literary, scientific and political activity. The novels "Countess Cosel", "Brühl" and "From the Seven Years' War" were written in this building between 1873 and 1875, and together they became known as the Saxon trilogy . In 1879 he moved to a larger building in the neighborhood.

On July 24, 1958, a memorial plaque for Kraszewski was inaugurated on today's museum building. During this time the idea arose to dedicate a museum to him here. The Adam Mickiewicz Museum in Warsaw made several exhibits available on permanent loan for this purpose in 1960, while Polish experts took care of the design of the museum and designed it in German and Polish. The museum's permanent exhibition was divided into two sections.

The first section concentrated on stations from Kraszewski's life. Following the example of the contemporary taste of the middle of the 19th century, his former living quarters in the house were redesigned and provided with portraits of Kraszewski and other Polish personalities. His study was also reconstructed and contained original evidence of his literary, musical and drawing work, including paintings and graphics, as well as his passion for collecting. At the same time, attention was drawn to Kraszewski's goals, namely the coming to terms with Polish history and overcoming the division of Poland .

In addition, the diverse intellectual, cultural and political relationships between Saxony and Poland, which played a major role in the past, were described. The Albertines , the Saxon ruling house, put two Polish kings in a personal union with August the Strong and his son in the early 18th century . Kraszewski had also devoted himself extensively to this subject during his lifetime and, in addition to the Saxon trilogy , a copy of which was exhibited in the museum's manuscript, also wrote several works about August the Strong. The rooms are therefore also furnished with portraits of the two Saxon-Polish rulers and Countess Cosel .

A second department addressed Dresden as a place of refuge for Polish emigrants , for example after the Kościuszko uprising in 1794, the November uprising 1830/31 and the January uprising 1863/64. Among other things, it reminded of the stays of Tadeusz Kościuszko and Adam Mickiewicz , who wrote the third part of his drama Totenfeier in Dresden .

In the course of the cultural agreement between Germany and Poland in 1997/99, the city of Dresden was responsible for the Kraszewski Museum; since then it has been part of the museums of the city of Dresden . In 2000 the exhibition was updated and the building was renovated and reopened on June 17, 2001. This also made it possible to open the museum all year round. Due to its location on the Prießnitzufer , the museum was affected by the 2002 flood. The resulting damage of 60,000 euros was repaired by early 2003; then the museum reopened.

In December 2011 almost all exhibits - 160 loans - had to be brought back to Poland. Therefore, the old permanent exhibition of the museum finally closed on December 19, 2011. The reason is a corresponding law of the Republic of Poland, which has been in force since 2007, according to which Polish cultural objects that are more than 50 years old may only be exhibited abroad for a maximum of five years. This made it no longer possible to continue the museum in its previous form, which is why it should be closed in mid-July 2012. At the beginning of 2013, however, the Kraszewski Museum received a new permanent exhibition, which Bogdan Zdrojewski , Poland's Minister of Culture and National Heritage, together with Bernd Neumann , the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, and Sabine Freifrau von Schorlemer , the Saxon State Minister for Science and Art, opened on January 18th.

literature

  • Martin Ringel: Over 20 years as an emigrant in Dresden: Józef Ignacy Kraszewski (1812–1887), a great Polish patriot . In: Jahrbuch zur Geschichte Dresdens 23, 1987. S. 54–60.
  • Martin Ringel: The Polish writer JI Kraszewski in exile in Dresden . In: Sächsische Heimatblätter 12, Heft 5, 1966. P. 434–458.
  • Jens-Uwe Sommerschuh: No writer and no artist either: the Kraszewski memorial bears witness to the 21-year stay in Dresden of the most widely read Pole in Poland . In: Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel 155, Issue 9, Leipzig 1988. pp. 175–177.
  • Gerhard Thümmler : The Kraszewski House in Dresden . In: Sächsische Heimatblätter 7, Heft 2, 1961. S. 121–124.
  • Zofia Wolska-Grodecka, Brigitte Eckart: Kraszewski Museum in Dresden . Dresden / Warsaw 1996. ISBN 83-904307-3-8 ( museum guide )

Web links

Commons : Kraszewski Museum  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Torsten Claus: One hundred and sixty to three. The Dresden Kraszewski Museum will be cleared out in December due to a Polish law. In: Dresdner Latest News , issue of November 18, 2011, p. 10.
  2. ^ Kraszewski Museum in Dresden is finally history. In: SZ Online , May 29, 2012.
  3. ↑ Kraszewski Museum should not continue to operate without exhibits. In: dresden.de. State capital Dresden, May 29, 2012, accessed on February 6, 2017 (press release).
  4. ^ Simona Block: Poles dusting the Dresden Kraszewski Museum. In: Dresdner Latest News , January 17, 2013.
  5. ↑ Torsten Claus: The almost lost jewel. After a turbulent year, the Kraszewski Museum has a future thanks to Polish help. In: Dresdner Latest News , edition of January 19, 2013, p. 9.

Coordinates: 51 ° 4 ′ 13.4 "  N , 13 ° 45 ′ 47"  E